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The Creston parks and recreation board met Tuesday with Tessa Hull scheduled on the agenda to introduce a new civic group, Rainbow Park Restoration.
Hull’s group’s aim is to be a 501(c)3, which she argued was a more transparent fundraising effort for the park.
Darlene and Deborah Loudon, of the Southside Boosters, who have been collecting private donations for over 20 years, spoke at a public forum amid a conflict between their established organization and the formation Hull had hoped to bring to the board.
“We have had the Southside Booster club for 27 years and at the time we took it over, nobody seemed to care about Rainbow Park and all of a sudden, we now have all of these groups and all these committees, it seems like nobody can work together,” Darlene said. “They accuse me I don’t want to work with anybody, through the years, I have tried to work with people, they don’t want to work with me, so it’s strictly the Southside Booster club for me. It’s pretty bad when the Chamber of Commerce calls you and asks you if you’re down the tube because people are calling down there, asking, they’ve seen it on Facebook. So that’s not a very good thing, I don’t think, and I’m not going anywhere, so people are stuck with me for awhile, because the Boosters are going to be around, the only person that’s going to say that I’m not is the man up in the sky.”
Darlene Loudon was approached about the broken fountain at Rainbow Park by a parks and recreation board member, and Loudon said the Southside Boosters had been raising their own money to fix it. Loudon said the fundraisers were successful, but the board member did not know what was wrong with the fountain, which prompted Loudon to borrow the help of Shawn Kelley.
“I said in other words then, I’m on my own,” Loudon said. “Then Shawn offered to come and so, he’s not doing it for nothing, we paid him to come and do what he could do on it. So I’m not working with any other group now, I’m strictly with the Southside Booster Club, because that’s all we can handle right now, so if you want to accuse me of not wanting to help, that’s fine, I don’t care.”
Loudon was frustrated by a new group trying to raise money for park projects in a different way.
“I’m not having somebody come in and overdo what we have done, we have taken a lot of money and our latest thing was putting the roof on the large shelter, so we have put the flags in the park, we poured the concrete, we put the roof on the bandstand, we built small shelters, the stuff is not cheap, what we’ve done,” she said.
“It’s up to you guys how many people and groups you want to be in the park to do things for the park.”
Loudon said there was a flower committee, but it’s difficult to maintain them, because of both the broken fountain and the frequent destruction of flowers and shrubs by park goers.
“There’s always somebody breaking something, in fact, they cut our swing up the other day, so we’re trying to get a new swing, right now, the swing’s $1,200.”
Deborah corrected her and said the figure is closer to $1,300. Darlene did not want the conflict between the Boosters and Rainbow Park Restoration to reach the parks board.
“It should never have to come to all of this, committees need to get together, they need to tell the park and rec what they’re doing for their projects.”
The parks and recreation board must know of the projects being done at the spaces they are responsible for.
“As does everybody, Darlene,” Board Chairman John Kawa said, “if you hire somebody at Rainbow Park, I want you to come to the park board and make sure of that first.”
Kawa also said the board’s budget is spread across five different parks which makes it difficult to invest the proper time and money into each park’s respective needs. He did, however, speak about the board’s efforts to fix the fountain, including the addition of concrete rings and the prospective involvement from an organization from Des Moines that offered them a figure.
“One bid was $500,000 to fix it and then it went up from that, so it’s not like we’re not trying to fix that fountain, because we are.”
Southside Boosters recruited Shawn Kelley to fix the fountain and compensated him with funds that they had raised.
“He’s pulling out pipes, he’s putting fittings on, he’s done a wonderful job of working on the fountain and it’s come a long way from where it was, I mean, the progress he’s made in the short amount of time, considering how long it’s been sitting and sitting and sitting, I mean, he’s almost got it there,” Deborah Loudon said.
Kawa was upset that the boosters did not tell the board about Kelley’s involvement.
“We didn’t know Shawn Kelley was going to go work on that fountain, it never came to the board here, nobody came to the board and said, ‘we’d like to hire Shawn Kelley,’ it never happened.’”
The other one said it has been known Kelley was repairing the fountain for over a year, which upset Kawa.
“Who said Shawn Kelley was supposed to go over there and work on that fountain? You guys.”
Gary Borcherding said coming to the board is necessary for liability issues, but Deborah Loudon said they have never received pushback in which liability was invoked.
“For thirty years, nobody has said a word until this year,” she said.
Deborah said there should be no animosity between the Southside Boosters and Rainbow Park Restoration.
“I don’t think any of us should be fighting amongst each other, I don’t think any of us citizens are fighting against each other, the crux of the matter is, things are not getting done, so then all of us here, all of these ladies and gentlemen feel like, and they’re good people, and they feel like, ‘Okay, we want to make things better, we want amenities in Creston, we want things done.’”
Deborah said she was disturbed by the conflict between the Southside Boosters and Rainbow Park Restoration.
“It has made me physically sick, this past week, that all this bickering has been going on, I’ve been friends with most of these people, Shawn, I’ve been friends with for 60 years and Sarah I know, Tessa and Rob (Hull’s husband,) I’ve always admired and loved...and I feel like people are ganging up on us and, once you know that someone’s doing something, I think it’s a courtesy to speak with them if they’ve been doing it for an x amount of time, it would’ve been a courtesy and respectful to talk to that group that has been doing it.”
Borcherding read a statement in an effort to dissolve the argument. He also asserted the parks and recreation board does not have a capital expenses budget, which is why they reach out to groups who can provide a funding source so a grant can be written for a project. Southside Boosters have not come to the board with their funds to create a project with the city involved.
“This board has spent the last 17 years doing fundraisers and chasing fundraising sources. We have many great partners in this community, we welcome any group or organization with ideas and ideas for funding. We’ve made improvements in every park in our community over those years, not in the order that people want, but sometimes in the order that the funding is available. Sometimes things happen in different orders because of the funding sources that are there.”
After a significant donation was made for the fountain’s repair, Deborah Loudon asked where the money went.
“There’s only one fund it can legally go in, it’s in the McKinley Park restoration fund,” Borcherding said.
Sarah Scull, member of Rainbow Park Restoration, spoke for her party amid the debacle.
“I just wanted to add, the reason I’ve been attacked by some, I don’t know if they’re a part of Southside Boosters, but they definitely have an affinity for Southside Boosters and Rainbow Park,” said Scull. “I like the direction of forming a 501(c)3 in order to achieve everything that you want to see. We share the same goal.”
Scull spoke of her and other committee members’ grant writing experience to express their organization’s legitimacy.
“We have experience writing grants for the past 15 years. That’s been my professional experience,” Scull said. “I’ve raised millions of dollars to fund nonprofits, a college foundation in San Diego that I helped start and community organizations, and for me, as busy as I am being a single parent, that’s what I want to spend my time doing.”
Tessa Hull also spoke of her own grant writing experience and her hand in various community organizations when introducing herself as president of Rainbow Park Restoration.
“Our goal is to become a 501(c)3, however, we do not have funds yet, so we have to do some fundraising,” Hull said.
Hull also said Rainbow Park Restoration assembled seats in their organization but nothing beyond that was planned. The group was formed after Hull and other members of the community had found time to do the work they wanted to see done to the park. Rainbow Park restoration is also chaired by Vice President Jane Briley of the historic preservation commission, Secretary Kelly Marcus, also of the historic preservation commission, Gibson Memorial Library director Aric Bishop also joined as treasurer and Creston High School drama teacher Laura Granger is a member-at-large.
Shawn Kelley is Hull’s father, which she invoked as part of her credentials before the board. Hull and her husband also own two businesses in the community and serves on various boards.
“My dad grew up in Creston, all his life, his family has owned businesses all throughout Creston, we’ve just always been involved,” Hull said.
Board member Jane Brown said Hull and company should have come to the board before the organization was formed. The board ultimately took no action on either side of the debate.
In other parks and rec board news:
• Skate for Awareness will be holding a Bike Show with Bikers Against Child Abuse (BACA) lakeside at McKinley Park Sept. 11
• The board approved new murals at the McKinley Park Aquatic Center